GenEtnologi

Om tvärvetenskapens vedermödor och belöningar

Abstract

All forms of fieldwork put the researcher in a number of tricky situations. Our project "Gene ethics, gene technology, and everyday ethics" is no exception. It involves well known difficulties such as the impossibility of "going native" coupled with ethnocentrism, but also representation critique and reflexivity. The work in our cross-disciplinary project brings several of these questions of method and analysis to the fore at the same time as new questions arise. What does it mean, for example, that our field is pervaded by the special status that advanced medical research is ascribed? And how do we handle the fact that not only empirical data but also analytical tools are provided in this way? Namely that physicians, geneticists and microbiologists on the one hand are informants (as are their patients who are interviewed by us), and on the other hand are partners in our joint research work. A difficulty in separating what is the collection of knowledge from what is the production of knowledge emerges here. To do science across disciplinary boundaries entails a constant shuttling between home and away. This makes demands on researchers who are open and sensitive to each other's perspectives, but also, to a high degree, on researchers with stable disciplinary identities. The intradisciplinary foundation must be solid.